The National
Museum told Xinhua News Agency yesterday that aerial
photography has helped shed new light on Shangdu, the capital of
Kublai Khan's empire that was known to Marco Polo as Xanadu.
His description of the city in The Travels of Marco
Polo 700 years ago has been partly backed by the work, Yang
Lin, director of the museum's center of remote sensing and aerial
photography. "We can see the spectacular city with its scale and
the density of buildings."
The ruins have been overgrown for more than 600 years, but
archaeologists took a large number of photos of the site in
Zhenglan Banner in north China's Inner
Mongolia Autonomous Region over recent years from planes flying
at low altitudes.
Yang said that by examining the photos, archaeologists can tell
the shape of the ancient site and where relics are located.
Shangdu was built in 1256 under the command of Kublai Khan who
was enthroned there four years later. It became a summer resort
after the Yuan Dynasty (1279-1368) moved its capital to present-day
Beijing and was destroyed during a peasant war at the end of the
dynasty.
According to Marco Polo, there were palaces made of marble in
the city, with rooms gilded and painted.
"Since the capital has been dilapidated for many years, we were
not clear about its layout. And because it is located in vast
grassland, the inconvenient conditions make it difficult to conduct
archaeological research in usual ways," said Yang.
The photos show that the city was square with three concentric
city walls. The outer wall was surrounded by a moat of 20 meters
wide.
Inside the city, archaeologists said that they can discern
remains of barns, barracks and horse stables, and remains of a
flood prevention dam have been identified about two kilometers
north and west of the city.
Marco Polo claimed that a wide road connected Shangdu and Dadu
(today's Beijing), and that along the road shops and merchants
could be found everywhere.
Yang said the aerial photos do show remains of a wide road
running south of the city from west to east and leading into the
grassland.
(Xinhua News Agency October 9, 2005)